


Fast Forward, and Everyone in This Conversation Is Dead

by Adaris



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: And occasionally actual baggage, Angst, But also with dogs!, Depression, Drinking, Emotional Baggage, Emotional talks with your friends, Gentle Alcoholism, Musicals, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Finale, Roomba Hera, So listen sometimes you write something that is supposed to be cute but then it becomes sad as heck, So much angst, Stay tuned for Relationship Times, Team Hephaestus, They Adopted a Dog AU, job searches, smores
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-24
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2020-10-27 16:29:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20763437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adaris/pseuds/Adaris
Summary: Maxwell, Jacobi, and Kepler always bring back souvenirs from missions, and usually, it's bullet casings or office supplies stolen from another company—but one time, it's a stray dog. Her name is Tiamat, and she's the reason they move into the same house together. They become lowkey famous around Merritt Island as 'those people who seem to be living together for the sole purpose of sharing a dog'.Jacobi comes back from Wolf-359 alone.





	1. Home

**Author's Note:**

> *shoves my other projects under the table* how y'all doin I bring you the Jacobi  
This fic will get happier eventually I swear

It's an average day at the office for SI-5's Strike Team Alpha.

Jacobi jumps down the flight of stairs because yes, he can totally make that distance, but he comes down hard on his ankle because no, he really can’t. "Fuck!" he shouts on reflex.

Kepler and Maxwell make the jump without any problems because _of course they would_, and Jacobi has to limp after them.

Maxwell is furiously typing on her tablet as she runs. A bullet pings past her, and Kepler returns fire without even looking.

"This door!" Maxwell yells, and they all turn and barrel into a factory, like an actual factory hidden within an office building. Alarms blare, and they sprint past confused workers who aren't sure if they should evacuate or not. Then it's down another staircase that Jacobi does _not_ jump down and out through the loading dock in the back. After a brief, terrifying encounter with a pile of packing crates, they're in the street, where bystanders are looking up at the smoking building, and Jacobi’s ankle is throbbing with a vengeance.

"I think we're out of the woods," Kepler says, trying to sound official, but he's also leaning against a brick wall and gasping for air, which kind of undercuts the effect.

Maxwell flops directly onto the ground, regardless of the leaves and trash and broken glass, and Jacobi decides yes, that is a very good idea, and joins her.

"Okay, enough break time, let's get going," Kepler orders after three minutes of silence, sounding ready to run another marathon. Further evidence that he’s an Eris-type program in a very realistic chassis.

Maxwell and Jacobi groan in unison, and Maxwell grabs a newspaper from the ground and hides behind it.

"The two of you need to work out more," Kepler quips. Bastard doesn’t even look winded anymore, just mildly impatient.

They groan again, and Jacobi tries to join her under the newspaper.

"Get your own g—hhh—agh. Dammit. Get your own goddamn hiding place," she snaps, still out of breath but evidently ready to die for last week's comic strips.

Jacobi obligingly rolls underneath some mildewed leaves and tries to dissolve into them.

"The two of you can be such children sometimes," Kepler sighs like a disappointed father. Like both their disappointed fathers.

_That's low even for you_.

Jacobi rolls away from Kepler, and his leaf pile squeaks in surprise.

"Something you want to say, Mister Jacobi?"

Jacobi scoots away from the leaves and shoves his hand directly into the pile without thinking too hard about what might be in there. Whatever it is, it's soft, and fluffy. He grabs the thing and pulls it out of the leaves, expecting maybe a discarded jacket. Instead, he finds a puppy. Not any specific kind of dog, just small. Also, alone in a pile of leaves. That's a normal thing.

"Am I hallucinating, or are there dogs in that pile of leaves?" Maxwell asks.

Jacobi stands up, holding the puppy like a football. She—probably a she—doesn't have a collar, and he can feel the puppy's tiny bones underneath all the fur. "Oh, there's only one dog in them thar leaves. Sorry, Maxwell, you're officially crazy."

Maxwell abandons her newspaper in order to look at the puppy. "That," she says intently, pointing to the fluffy blob, "That is a puppy."

"I see you're putting all of your PhDs to good use, Dr. Maxwell," Kepler says without missing a single beat.

The puppy licks Jacobi’s hand, and bullets start hitting the bricks next to them. Unrelated to the dog. Probably.

“Back to the car,” all of them say at the same time.

Jacobi starts to run but immediately stumbles on his ankle, almost dropping the puppy and making it yip in surprise.

“Give me the dog, Jacobi,” Kepler orders. And then the director of SI-5 shoves the puppy into his jacket, zips it up so just the puppy's ears stick out of the top, and starts booking it down the sidewalk.

Jacobi would take pictures if he weren't busy dodging cars on a dodgy ankle.

“I’m prestarting the engine! We should be good to go as soon as we’re there!” Maxwell shouts over the sounds of oncoming traffic.

It's closer than Jacobi would like to admit, but they make it onto the road in one piece. Not their best escape, but also not their worst.

Kepler tries to unzip his jacket, and the puppy protests by barking extremely loudly and digging its claws into his shirt. With restrained patience, Kepler orders, "Jacobi, take your leaf-encrusted dog back."

"Okay, come on," Jacobi says, trying to pick the dog up again. It looks up at him with big eyes; it looks less like an animal and more like a tangle of black-and-white yarn and a whole lot of leaves. "Aw, look at that face."

The puppy scrambles over to Maxwell's lap and nuzzles against her side, and she scratches it under its chin.

"We're getting rid of the dog," Kepler says.

Maxwell looks up with her mouth hanging open in shock. "What do you mean,_ getting rid of the dog_? Abandoning it by the side of the road? Even you wouldn't be that much of an asshole."

Jacobi starts untangling the leaves from the puppy's fur. "Seconded, and besides, we only just found him. Her. Right, definitely a her. She doesn't deserve to be abandoned in the streets of Detroit again."

The puppy starts to gnaw on Jacobi's sleeve, and he disentangles her and sets her back on Maxwell's lap.

"I'm thinking we could name her Ahsoka," Maxwell says, ruffling the puppy's fur and making the puppy close her eyes in delight.

Jacobi scrutinizes the dog, the splash of white on her chest and forehead, little white feet, and otherwise stormy grey fur. "Nah… what about Jadzia?"

"Trillian? Dairine? Myka?"

"Wait, can I change my answer to Vastra?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Kepler interrupts while he makes an extraordinarily illegal U-turn into oncoming traffic. He sighs and then says finally, "We're calling her Tiamat."

Jacobi can't stop himself from smiling. "Sounds good to me."

—

"Who's a good dog? You are! Ouch!" Jacobi staggers backwards as Tiamat crashes into him full-force, still energetic despite her early-morning run with Kepler. "You're so good!"

Tiamat barks directly into his face and gives him a thorough lick.

"Go get Maxwell!" Jacobi says, and Tiamat bounds after the scientist with a vengeance.

"No, wait, I'm holding coffee!" she yelps as she drops the cup in order to catch Tiamat. "Jacobi, you're paying for that mug, you absolute—"

"What, this mug?" Kepler asks, holding out said cup with a flourish because of _course_ he caught it before it hit the ground. With all the coffee still inside. He doesn't even have the decency to look like the early-morning run tired him out, and he smirks like he knows exactly what Jacobi is thinking.

Sensing an opening, Tiamat shoves her face into the mug and starts to slurp down the contents. Kepler jerks backwards, and hot coffee goes everywhere. For an instant, the coffee hangs suspended in the air, like someone's pressed pause, and then it all crashes down in a wave of caffeinated disaster.

"Tia! _Don't drink Maxwell's coffee_," Kepler orders, and oh boy, he's deploying the blunt-force trauma face. Jacobi's spine turns to ice even though it isn't even directed at him.

Tiamat starts licking the coffee from the floor because that face has absolutely zero effect on her.

"No, that's bad for you!" Jacobi shoos her back from the coffee. "Someone grab a towel before she makes a break for the coffee again."

"Can dogs drink caffeine?" Maxwell asks, grabbing a wad of paper towels.

"Maxwell, please use a dish towel," Kepler sighs.

"Oh, for Pete's sake…" She marches out of the room, clatters loudly through the linen closet, and then a white towel flies across the kitchen and smacks into Kepler's hands. "Ya happy now?"

"Immensely."

Jacobi wrestles against Tiamat, who's watching Kepler mop up the coffee and downright howling in protest. "Come on, don't give me that. You can't even drink coffee!"

"It's all gone," Maxwell groans as she comes back into the kitchen, shoving her face into her towel. "I'll have to start brewing another cup."

"A little less complaining, a little more cleaning," Kepler snaps, although he doesn’t sound particularly angry.

It’s all terribly normal. Too normal. Jacobi thinks that someone’s going to open fire at the house, or Cutter will have been hiding in the closet the whole time, or it’ll turn out that the oven is a really clever time bomb or something.

Tiamat presses both her forepaws to Jacobi’s chest, staring him in the eyes, and woofs once.

"Don’t give me that," he says sternly.

She woofs again.

"I'm not letting you near it!"

She changes tack and starts giving him immensely sad puppy eyes, ears drooping for the effect.

"Nuh-uh." Jacobi shakes his head.

"All clear, you can let her go now," Kepler says when Jacobi is three seconds away from cracking.

Tiamat bounds away and starts licking the floor tiles, but there’s nothing left, and she looks up at them and whines.

"You _just_ ate breakfast," Maxwell accuses. "_And_ my coffee. What more can I give to you that you haven't already taken?"

"And they say I'm the dramatic one," Kepler comments as the phone starts to ring.

"SI-5's residence, how can I help you?" Jacobi sing-songs while he jams his finger down on the speakerphone button.

On the other end of the line, Cutter says, "Daniel! I presume Alana and Warren are with you," he simpers. Literally. His voice sounds like sugar-drenched french toast.

"Mister Cutter, how nice to hear from you." A customer service smile is frozen on Kepler's face, even though Cutter isn't even in the room to see it.

"I hope you're ready for a little adventure, team! So pack your bags and set your wills in order, because you're going on a trip to the USS _Hephaestus_. There's something I need you to take care of."

* * *

Fast forward, and everyone in that conversation is dead except for Jacobi. The brand new _Urania_'s aged a few decades in the intervening years, a bit less shiny, a bit more empty. Jacobi feels like a completely different person.

The house, on the other hand, is unchanged; Kepler's blueberry bushes have filled in, but it's all the same.

When he unlocks the door, the first thing he hears is pounding footsteps, and then a whole lot of barking. He has about five seconds to drop everything before eighty pounds of excited dog bowl him over and wow, she _really_ likes to lick. "Tia, I missed you too!" He scratches her side and she licks him even harder.

Whole body wiggling in excitement, she pins him to the ground with two paws and woofs right in his face. Then she lets him go and starts sniffing the air and the ground in confusion. She bounds towards Jacobi's car, barking, and then comes back to him and paws at his leg.

"What is it?"

Tiamat starts to run frantically like she's searching for something, or someone—

"Tia, stop, they—they aren't coming back," Jacobi tries to tell her.

Because she doesn't understand English, Tiamat sits down next to the car and starts to howl loud enough to wake the dead. Almost.

"Stop! Stop it!" He tries to drag the dog back inside the house because the neighbors are definitely not going to like this if it goes on for much longer.

Tiamat tilts her head back and howls again, digging her heels into the grass.

"They're gone! They aren't coming back, they're gone. I couldn't save them."

Her jaws snap shut and she whines, ears flat against the back of her head. She sniffs Jacobi for a third time, and finding no sign of Maxwell or Kepler, lets out a long, draw-out howl. But now she sounds desolate, and once she's finished, she curls up next to Jacobi on the lawn, burying her nose in his jacket.

She's soft and fluffy, but not a puppy anymore. Nobody could fit her in their jacket.

Because they're on the lawn, he has an excuse to stay out of the house for a few moments longer. The sun sets, and Tiamat curls up on top of Jacobi like he's a pillow. (_Tiamat_… the first starship to make contact with alien life. Murderous alien life. Great thing to name a dog after, K—just… great.)

Eventually, he has to move. Go into the house, feed the dog, confront the ghosts.

Tiamat sticks by his side and occasionally pokes her cold nose into his leg, like she's making sure he's still there.

The door swings open on silent hinges and it's just the way they left it inside: Maxwell’s socks on the couch, Kepler’s extensive, worryingly organized collection of kitchen knives, the whiteboard of chores that just says, "Take off your shoes or else."

They'd lived in the same house because of Tiamat. Now, dropping all of his stuff salvaged from the _Urania_ in the kitchen, Jacobi’s starting to regret it.

The first room he visits is Maxwell's. Her door features a full-length picture of a transformer with edits written on it in silver Sharpie. When he opens the door, Tiamat bounds inside and starts shoving her face into Maxwell's laundry pile. At least it's clean laundry, formerly folded nicely.

The room hasn't changed, except it's a bit dustier than usual.

When he sits down on the edge of her bed, the covers black and patterned with green circuits, it's like she could still be there. Maybe standing outside, just around the corner so he can't see her, but she can still surprise him and make him drop something important.

He picks up a notebook and a calendar she's left on her bed and stacks them together, but when he moves to keep cleaning, packaging her things away, his hands won't move.

If he does this, then he'll finally be admitting to himself that she'll never come back. He left her seven point eight light-years from Earth, he knows she'll never come back, but packing everything of hers into boxes and hiding it away and turning her room into just another space in the house, empty and unused—

Maybe he can pretend she's coming back for a few more minutes.

The next room might be easier.

"Come on, Tia."

When they originally bought the house, Kepler had claimed the third floor (more of an attic, really, it only has two rooms) as his own, a place that No One Was Allowed to Visit on Pain of Death.

So Jacobi stays on the lookout for traps as he enters the attic. It seems reasonably safe, and he doesn't get stabbed to death by knives springing out of the walls like he thought he might. Tiamat trails behind him, nails clacking on the hard wood; he should probably take her to a groomer when he has a chance.

The first room is lined with books. There's a nice carpet and a wooden desk with a bottle of whiskey and exactly one glass. The second room is a bedroom. Everything is neat and organized, with an airy tan-and-cream color scheme accented with birch wood. Tiamat takes one look at the place and jumps on the bed, shoving her face in the pillows like she might catch Kepler’s sandalwood scent one last time.

Jacobi opens the closet and finds row after row of perfect pressed button-downs, crisp jackets, and dusty shoes. There are weapons hidden somewhere in here, probably in some kind of secret cabinet or something. But the room itself is impersonal, like a hotel.

"Who the hell were you, Kepler?" Jacobi asks the clothes. "You have to give me something."

There isn't even any art in here, only pristine walls and a window.

Jacobi walks to the bedside table, which features a generic if sophisticated lamp, a clock, and a blank notebook. He flips through all the pages, watching their lines overlap, and a single piece of paper slips free and falls to the floor.

In a flash, Tiamat slaps it out of the air with a well-aimed paw and looks up at Jacobi with a big grin as if to say, _got it!_

"Good job," he tells her, ruffling the top of her head. 

He flips the piece of paper over and almost drops it again. It's a photo of him and Maxwell, taken from surveillance footage judging by the timestamp and terrible angle. They’re both working on something mechanical. Maxwell’s hair is getting tangled in her work, and Jacobi is pinning it back with a lime green barrette.

It’s so ridiculously mundane. Ordinary. Jacobi doesn't even remember when this happened. But for some reason, this was the moment Kepler chose to keep with him. Like… like it had mattered to him.

Jacobi searches the rest of the room and there is nothing else that indicates this room belonged to someone. Just a single photo hidden in a blank journal.

"You sentimental bastard," Jacobi mutters, caught between angry and sad and confused, in the eye of a storm.

Tiamat pads up next to him and butts her head against his palm.

"Yeah… let’s get out of here."

—

Three days later, he cleans out Maxwell's and Kepler’s respective rooms for real. Maxwell owns—owned— a lot of things, mostly mechanical parts, computers… things he can either reuse or copy the data elsewhere and sell. He keeps her third laptop, the one made while she was at MIT; it’s horrifically ugly, made only for functionality, and he loves it. All her AI projects can go to Hera. Probably. Jacobi sure as hell isn’t explaining to them where Maxwell went.

Kepler’s things seem to have been ordered directly from an interior design warehouse, and they’re easy enough to get rid of. None of them seemed to belong to him in the first place. Jacobi packs them away, the shirts and table lamps and neatly arranged notebooks, and then he’s alone.

The only pictures of Maxwell and Kepler are from classified security, and they weren't ones for trinkets or sentimentality. And after their rooms are empty, it's almost like they were never even there.

He should probably move somewhere else. No, he should definitely. The house is too filled with ghosts for anybody's good, but at the same time, he can't. Where would he move, anyway? Not back to Milwaukee or San Francisco, that's for sure. For a second, he considers Montana, but there's almost nothing there to blow up, and it would hurt too much to be there without—without.

He should leave, just like everyone else, but he knows he won't. He can't fathom starting over again.

* * *

"You have three messages. First message. June twelfth, four-twenty-nine PM.

"Hey Daniel, it's Doug. Just wondering how, uh, you were doing? Listen, I'm going to Texas soon. Well, going _back_ to Texas. Don't remember it, but you never know, there could be something up there that jogs the ole neurons or whatever. I was wondering if you wanted to get together with Team Hephaestus before we all go our separate ways. Isabel's getting ready to fly to an island in the middle of nowhere, no idea what Ren wants to do, so… it might be awhile before we can meet up again. Yeah, I don't like it either. Anyway, call me back if you want to do that. I would really like—"

The answering program beeps. "Next message. June twelfth, four-thirty PM.

"Sorry, ran out of space. Bad comms officer. I would really like it if you were there. And you can bring your dog! We're all big fans of dogs, or, at least, everyone else is, and I like the concept of dogs a _lot_—sorry, going off track again. Back to my actual message. We're meeting at that place Titusville, the one with the flamingoes, tonight at seven. Call me back! Bye!

"Next message. June twelfth, four-thirty-five PM.

"Hi, Jacobi. I know Doug already called you about tonight, since he just spent an hour pacing around working up the nerve to call you. Be there or be square, nugget. Lovelace out.

"No more messages."

Jacobi stares at his phone, although it doesn't move. He scrolls through his contacts to_ Eiffel, Douglas_, then scrolls past to _Lovelace, Isabel_, then back to _Minkowski, Renée_. Then he clicks the one he knows he shouldn't, the one he's told himself he won't click a dozen times and done it just as many. The squeezing in his chest is worth hearing her one more time when everything was okay.

"Hello! You’ve reached the voicemail of Alana—no, Daniel, I _just_ made those noodles! Fuck, I'm gonna have to re-record this thing. Daniel Kenneth Jacobi, you'd better put that bowl down or—"

The voicemail beeps.

"Hey, 'Lana, it's me. Just thinking about getting drinks with the lady who killed you, amnesia boy, amnesia grandma, an immortal alien, and I guess Hera on Skype or something. You know, average Thursday stuff. Not that I don't like them, but I don’t. That's not fair, they're… decent. I just don't like what they remind me of, what—anyway. Tia says hi, she really misses you. Um, well, I guess I'll see you around. Not too—I mean—you know. Eventually." He hangs up the phone and stares at it, the glow of the screen almost too-bright in the darkened kitchen. Tiredness washes over him, and all he wants to do is sleep and maybe, hopefully, forget about everything. It would be better than this.

Then he scrolls back up in his contacts, which is frankly far too short for the amount of scrolling he’s been doing.

_Eiffel, Douglas_ stares back at him, and then he presses _call_.

— 

"So, what are you going to do with all this time not trapped on a murder space station hellscape, Jacobi?" Lovelace asks, kicking her feet up on the table.

Minkowski smacks her with a napkin, and Lovelace puts her feet back on the ground.

Jacobi watches the entire procedure with mild amusement. "Me? Oh, sit in my giant house with the lights off and eat potato chips, probably." His drink preferences lie firmly within the realm of the cheap, the highly flammable, and the definitely not whiskey, and he's chosen accordingly.

Lovelace is, of course, a fan of beer, and only the kind more bitter than Minkowski after she's lost a game of Monopoly. She laughs and takes a sip of her horrible beer. "Sounds like a fun time. Just don't… vanish, you know?"

"Me? Vanish? Come on, Lovelace, the whole lot of us is made up of bad pennies and black sheep. I think we're bound together by the laws of the universe. It would explain why I'm still hanging out with all of you." Jacobi gestures vaguely around the table with his mixed drink.

"It's because you like us, obviously." Eiffel is halfway through a Shirley Temple and getting sugar high already, and he's laying on the floor with Tiamat slobbering happily all over him. "I know, we're all going our separate-ish ways, but trust me, we'll all be back together at some point, right, Hera? I mean, you can't technically go anywhere because you're like on a spaceship floating above the restaurant and literally Skyping in and you can find us wherever we are."

Hera's laptop set up across the table shows a fairly convincing CGI face that looks nothing like Pryce. "My favorite comms officer is correct. I'm keeping tabs on everybody in this room, so good luck trying to disappear on me. I'll hunt you down. Even _you_." She jabs an accusatory finger at Jacobi.

"Wow, thanks, Hera."

"You grew on me. Like a fungus." Her nose wrinkles.

Jacobi clinks his glass with her imaginary one. "I'll drink to that."

"But come on, Jacobi, where are you actually going to go?" Lovelace asks. "You can't possibly want to stay here."

"I, uh, don't know where else I'd go. Kind of, you know, back to square one right now. No job, still eminently unhireable. I'm going to stay here."

Tiamat woofs from where Eiffel is sitting, still scratching her behind her ears.

"I love your dog!" Eiffel coos, burying his face in Tiamat's fluffy fur. "Why are dogs so good? Renée, can I get a dog?"

"I don't know, Doug, can you take care of a dog?" she asks, mostly rhetorically.

Eiffel cuddles with Tiamat, and she licks the side of his face. "Yeah!"

"Do you know _how_ to take care of a dog?"

"Uh… Renée, can you get a dog?"

"We'll see about it," Minkowski concedes after a long moment, and Eiffel beams.

Fuck if Jacobi won't miss all of those little bastards. Or maybe he'll just miss not being alone, or having a reason to drink without judgement.

Lovelace looks over at Jacobi like she knows what he's thinking, and she gives him a smile that's not happy, not exactly, but full of the kind of bittersweet nostalgia he can't stand right now. He squishes every emotion that wells up inside him back down with a drink he wishes tasted like whiskey.


	2. Sleep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daniel Jacobi, now with depression and a warning for heavy drinking and general recklessness. But there's also snuggles and pancakes :D

He should really have learned to stop walking by Radio Shack.

It's been months now, and_ every time_ he does, he remembers when he and—when he and.

But now he's alone, and he can't help but remember how happy she was buying cheap junk and using it to make the silliest things, even though she had the best materials on the planet available at Goddard. But sitting in their living room with a gutted TV and a toaster in front of them, trying their hardest to make a stargate? Probably the best fun they had.

He looks at the display of TVs in the window, all of them showing the same angle of the storefront. On the screens, there are a dozen haggard shapes with too-long ratty hair and stained clothes glowering back at him. They all scowl, then they slouch out of the frame.

He's got to carry Tiamat's dog food back to the car.

Driving isn't any better. He has to leave the radio off, otherwise he might hear something about Goddard Futuristics' fall from grace. They keep bringing up everyone who died so tragically on the _Hephaestus_ Station, Cutter, Riemann, Young, Hilbert, Kepler, Maxwell, Lovelace and her crew.

Jacobi should probably be in jail by now, but he isn't. He's one of the ones who died—Minkowski's decision.

Funny that she should decide to kill him too. Add it to the fucking list.

Hera changed his name in all of Goddard's databases to something random, just so Daniel Jacobi could continue to exist somewhere else. At least he gets to keep his own name.

He pulls into the driveway and puts the car into park. Tiamat's barking startles him into opening the door, dragging her food out of the trunk, and going into the house.

"Hey, pup."

She sniffs at the bag of kibble like she's going to get fed soon.

"Come on, wait until dinner." Jacobi sighs and slumps into the closest chair, not even bothering to turn the lights on.

He must've fallen asleep at some point, because he jerks awake to find Tiamat inches from his nose. "Jesus! What could you possibly—"

Her stomach growls, and she lays her ears flat against her head, resting one paw right on his leg.

"Ah, fuck. Sorry, what time is it—"

It's way past dinnertime for either of them, and frankly, he's impressed that she's waited this long to wake him. Jacobi measures out Tiamat's food and watches her scarf it down in about thirty seconds. She licked her jowls and pads over to Jacobi again, tail wagging.

He lets her out for Business, and when she comes back in, she bounds up the stairs and flops down on Jacobi’s bed.

"Tia… agh, fine. Just don’t lick me." He gets under the blankets and feels a cold nose press against his thigh. "That's still weird."

With a resigned sigh, Jacobi closes his eyes, but now that he's actually trying to sleep, he can't manage it. What did he do to deserve this?

He's just managed to doze off for a few moments when his phone rings, and because it's right under his pillow, it's loud as _fuck_. "What?" he demands into the cursed device.

"Jacobi, don’t tell me you were asleep again. Come on, you’ve been pushing this chat off for weeks now."

So she's back from her tropical island getaway. Fan-freaking-tastic. "Lovelace, shut up about my sleeping habits," Jacobi whines. "Everything’s under control."

"By my calculations, you sleep at least sixteen hours a day. That’s not healthy for a human."

But it's also not healthy to obsessively track your former enemy's sleeping habits, so checkmate. "That’s what you think." He stifles a yawn so she doesn’t hear.

"You can’t spend all your time sleeping," Lovelace explains with absolutely no patience. "What about doing things?"

Jacobi scowls even though they’re talking over the phone, and she can’t see. "I’m just tired, okay? Spent ages sleeping in zero gravity, so I can appreciate sinking into a real people bed. Pardon me for getting the most out of it."

"Daniel," she says, repeating his name and making his spine crawl, "You have to… I just… listen, I’ve been worried about you. Everyone has."

"Worried?"

Lovelace pauses for a moment like she's organizing her thoughts into a pattern less likely to hurt him. "About Kepler and Max—"

"First of all, I don’t miss Kepler, that stupid bastard. Why would I need to talk about it? And second, shut up! Shut the hell up. Boo hoo, you’re worried. Whatever! I can take care of this myself, like I always have. Go and baby Eiffel, if you’re so desperate to find some helpless idiot to take care of," Jacobi snaps with way more energy than he thought he had. Who the hell did she think she was?

Lovelace lets out a huff of air that crackles over the phone. "Okay, let me phrase this another way. We’re concerned that your general emotional state might be—Ren, please, I'm getting to it!—that you might have depression."

"_What_?!" Jacobi demands in outrage. "I might be—look, it’s all under control. Seriously, go worry about something else."

"You’re never awake, your house is an absolute disaster, we don’t see you anymore, you’ve stopped calling Doug back and he cried about it for days… the only thing you actually do is take care of your dog." And oh shit, here comes the _sympathy_.

"Well, I already had it before I went to space, so great fucking deduction, Sherlock!" he practically shouts at her. "I’m just so—I don’t—I don’t want to think about it. I’m hanging up now."

"Daniel, wait—"

The phone clicks off. Jacobi hides his phone in a crack of the sofa and goes upstairs to sleep. He's revealed way too many things tonight.

—

The best part is that there’s no voice telling him to stop, and if things keep going like this, nobody ever will. Jacobi sighs contentedly and cradles the bottles of gin and vodka in his arms. Everything is so soft now. 

"Daniel? You in there?"

Jacobi scrambles to his feet so fast he unbalances the world and it tilts spinnily around and around like the floor is a boat floor. "Hellooooo?" he asks with perfect clarity.

"Daniel, I know you're in there, we just got your voicemail! Let us in!" The voice is a girl voice and muffled.

"Maxwell? That you?"

"Let me in _right the hell now_!" That doesn't sound like Maxwell... but who else would visit him at this time of night?

Jacobi takes a step towards the door and collapses into the chair next to him. Maybe another try?

He stands up and the world lurches again, but in a bad way. A _really_ bad way.

"Uh, Maxwell, I—" Jacobi hiccups, and his mouth floods with saliva. Tastes like juniper.

The pounding on the door is really getting to his head.

Jacobi takes a step towards the door and doubles over like he's been punched, but a lot of air bubbles come up instead of anything gross. That's a win for him. The coughing must sound pretty nasty, though, because Maxwell is freaking out on the other side of the door.

"Daniel, for fuck’s sake—Lovelace, circle 'round back, I’ll break down the front door."

"No, I’m okay—" Jacobi hiccups again, but this time it tastes _bad_. It tastes like cheap vodka, college nights that turned into mornings, and a lot of regrettable decisions.

But he would’ve been fine if he hadn’t remembered how much Maxwell used to like that drink Sex on the Beach (made with vodka), and if he hadn’t remembered her smile when he made the same ace jokes about it (come on, it was right there!). And that makes him he remember what she looked like when Minkowski was done with her, and Jacobi spits saliva for a second and throws up right on Minkowski’s shoes as she opens the door and _watches_ him with her ice-blue eyes.

Jacobi coughs and wipes his mouth on the bottom of his shirt, knowing that being presentable is not in the cards for him. "Hey, Minkowski."

She gives him the worst look of pity.

He hiccups, and when she reaches out to grab his arm, he flinches away. That makes him feel worse than all the alcohol.

"Okay, okay. Let’s get you… somewhere else," she says, and Lovelace has to circle back around the house to help him move.

Jacobi spends an embarrassing amount of time trying not to throw up again in the downstairs bathroom while the two of them talk amongst themselves. They could be at a bake sale or something, although for what reason...

The pain in his gut turns into a visceral, sour ache by about four in the morning, and Jacobi is both sweaty and cold, not to mention sticky. Concerningly sticky. And his head _hurts_.

"You want to talk about it?" Minkowski asks. There are dark cookie-cutter circles under her eyes, but she’s still awake, like a good little soldier, ugh.

"Talk about what?" Jacobi drowsily leans against the wall and curls in on himself, really hoping he falls asleep before she keeps talking.

Lovelace pokes him so he stays awake. "What you said to me, right before you hung up. Also, what you're doing right now, because it's fucking terrifying."

"Oh, don't worry about me, Captain, I don't do this often. Besides, I’ve had much worse." He rolls onto his side, feeling every movement deep in his gut. "So, so much worse."

"That is the most worrying thing you have ever said, and I'm counting when you said you valued parmesan cheese over human lives." Lovelace sits down next to him, cross-legged, and regards him with an extraordinarily judgmental eye. But it's way better than pity, and he'll take it.

"Daniel! Daniel?" And the family ghost bursts into the bathroom, jacket hanging off one shoulder like he'd forgotten to put it on properly. "Holy shit, Minkowski texted me. She didn’t say—"

Wow, this was probably one of his worst fears. But instead of embarrassment, which is what he expected to feel, he's… worried. About Eiffel. Even though Eiffel can't remember why this might be something he should be spared from seeing, which is somehow way worse. "Okay, okay, show’s over, everybody go home." Jacobi is about to say something else, but his stomach flips and he dry-heaves onto the tiles, which feels, in his professional opinion, bad. "Ouch."

"Oh, yeah, you’re doing just fine." Lovelace hauls him to his feet and, because Jacobi keeps seeing double of everything, she carries him to his bed.

"You’re so strong, Lovelace," he slurs sleepily. "Your arms are like… real good arms."

"Yeah, yeah." She dumps him on top of the duvet, and he groans and shoves his face into the closest pillow. "You’re going to have the worst hangover in the world tomorrow."

Eiffel crawls onto the bed next to Jacobi and snuggles up next to him like he doesn’t smell like alcohol and puke and sweat. "I haven’t seen you in awhile."

"Yeah, and ya wonder why," Jacobi mutters under his breath. He grabs the edge of the blanket and wraps himself in it like he’s a burrito, and he falls asleep with the knowledge he’ll wake up alone.

—

Jacobi has to push Tiamat onto the other side of the bed. "C’mon, Tia, five more—more minutes." Pain immediately shoots through his head, dizzying and sickening, and he almost throws up on the spot. Mmm, alcohol.

Someone who is totally not Tiamat wraps their arms around Jacobi and snuggles into him like he's a pillow and not a human-shaped blob of nope. "Morning to you too. Want some water?"

"…Eiffel?" Jacobi groans, disentangling himself from what are definitely Eiffel’s arms. "What the…?"

"What? I’m awake, what’s wrong?" another voice interrupts—Lovelace. She looks around, eyes frantic, until Minkowski’s snow-white hand grabs her wrist.

"It’s okay, Isabel, it’s fine. We’re at Daniel’s house," she says, softer than Jacobi thought she could ever say anything.

"Oh. Right, Daniel’s bender. Right." Lovelace shakes her head and rejoins Minkowski on the floor of Jacobi’s bedroom with a relieved sigh.

Jacobi has a sneaking suspicion they’re cuddling on his carpet.

"So, how do you feel?"

"My mouth tastes like puke, Eiffel. I want to die."

"Don’t ever drink like that again," Minkowski orders from the floor.

Jacobi winces at the sound.

"I think he agrees." Eiffel octopuses himself to Jacobi’s side again. He’s warm and comforting, and he smells like pizza rolls. Everything Jacobi could want in a man.

"I’ll hold you to that." Minkowski pokes her head up above the edge of the bed. "Every step you take, I'll be watching you."

Jacobi manages a huff of a laugh. "Fuck you." He feels something move around his feet, and then a pair of heavy (very heavy) paws land right on his stomach, and he groans in a mixture of actual and comedic pain. "_OhmygodTia_," he squeaks.

"Puppy!" Eiffel cheers as Tiamat settles right in between them. "You're so fluffy, so fluff—I mean, um, you okay over there, Daniel?"

"Yep, yep." Jacobi burps suspiciously. "Fine. What are you all doing here?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Lovelace demands as she stands up. "C'mon, Ren." And to Jacobi's gentle horror, she joins them on Jacobi's bed, which is seriously hurting for spare room.

After a half-second of deliberation, Minkowski slides in right next to her, wrapping an arm comfortably around Lovelace's waist. "We…" She scowls. "Dammit. We care what happens to you."

Jacobi wrinkles his nose, because _sentiment_. "Ugh. Nasty."

"Yeah. We're all surprised too," Lovelace sighs.

Eiffel shakes his head. "I'm not. You're one of us."

"Huh. Guess I am." He tries not to look too disgusted at being a Part of Something because that seems rude. 

"And you," Minkowski says with an air of authority, "need a job."

Wow, because he has so many career options in front of him! "I don’t think the ATF will be thrilled to have a pyromaniac working in the office."

"Making missiles," Lovelace interrupts. "You did that. That’s semi-normal."

"That's true, but you’re forgetting I can’t get a job _anywhere_. I’m still Daniel Jacobi, that guy who blew up two other guys on the job, in case that little fact slipped your minds. Goddard was the only place that would take me, because they didn't care about the law. Or killing people."

Minkowski shakes her head. "We can ask Hera to—"

"No. No jobs for me, I'm not ready for that kind of rejection." Or existential crisis. Can't they just let him have a hangover in peace?

Lovelace opens her mouth to say something more, but Eiffel is the one to stop her by playing this card: "Fine, if you don't want a job, just lay around here. I'll be with you the whole time, cuddling your dog and eating all of your tortilla chips. All of them. And I'll have endless reruns of _Friends_ on in the background."

"Oh." That's a pretty compelling threat. Jacobi _hates_ wanting chips and salsa and then not having any chips in the cupboard, not to mention the TV show Friends. He has his reasons. "If I tell you I'll look for a job, will you leave me in the peace of my own home?"

"We expect updates. _Regular_ updates," Minkowski says with spreadsheets in her eyes.

Jacobi scowls. "What, am I just going to hop onto some job site and look up ‘blowing shit to hell’ or something? I’ll get flagged by the government."

"You’ve got to be fucking kidding me," Lovelace mutters under her breath.

Minkowski disentangles herself from the heap and stands up, but she's only five foot two, so it doesn't really give her any more gravitas. "Fine, I’ll help you."

"Don’t need your help," he says petulantly.

"Studies show that’s a McFreaking lie." Eiffel nuzzles against Jacobi and Tiamat, looking completely ready to fall asleep again.

"Okay, we're all getting up now," Minkowski says, "Some of us to make breakfast, and others of us to check Indeed for jobs."

"I can make pancakes," Lovelace volunteers, and that wakes Eiffel up pretty much instantly. It's getting to be past lunchtime, but _pancakes_.

Jacobi can't remember the last time he was up this early. It's kind of a nice change, but also… at what cost?

"Don't take this the wrong way, but you need a shower," Eiffel says to him before darting off to the kitchen with Minkowski and Lovelace.

That's fair.

He takes a nice thirty minutes to sort that out while they cook, probably racking up one hell of a hot water bill in the process. Once he's in clothes that don't smell weird, he goes to check on them in the kitchen. Nothing's burned down, thankfully. Although the lack of several crucial ingredients in Jacobi's fridge led to the creation of strange, rubbery pancakes. At least the scrambled eggs are fine (and totally not expired at all).

While Lovelace and Eiffel wash the dishes, Minkowski follows through on her threat to find Jacobi a job. Or, at least, dust off his resume and send off a few applications. It's agonizing work—she pays more attention to detail than most people pay to their whole entire lives. And she hogs the mouse. But it's nice to feel like he has a purpose aside from feeding Tiamat. Minkowski's sheer bloody-minded determination must be rubbing off on him somehow, which is concerning, to say the least.

In all honesty, though, he really did need her help.

That says way more about him than it does about her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jacobi hates Friends because of Directive Podcast, which I absolutely recommend for some hot Existential Crisis
> 
> I feel like the active Wolf 359 fandom is shrinking and now this fic feels a lot more personal, like it's a secret? Between you and me and 65 other people. I don't know. Anyway. Thank you for reading, and I swear I'll turn Jacobi's life around if it's the last thing I do


	3. Marshmallows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Portrait of a man listening to a musical, feeling nothing but dread. Warning for alcoholism and Big Emotions.

"Whoever's in control of hiring people at the Missile Defense Agency is smoking something," Eiffel says with conviction.

"Yeah, I bet a lot of people are applying for jobs like these. Because working for the government is so great and all," Jacobi snarks. It's his default setting, he can't help it.

"Next time," Minkowski promises. "We can look for more jobs. There are always more, believe me."

He's really starting to wish Lovelace had made it to their weird lunch meetup, because maybe she could have stopped Minkowski from whipping out a tablet, connecting to the café wifi, and beginning round two of job torture.

"I'm not working at a place called 'Aerojet Rocketdyne'. It's not happening. Also, it's in Jupiter."

"Wait," Eiffel says, "Don't you mean it's ON Jupiter? Also, it's Jupiter! That sounds so cool! And I had no idea there was a space station called _Aerojet Rocketdyne_. What a badass name."

Minkowski groans, and Jacobi empathizes. "He means the town in Florida. Aerojet is the company name."

"Oh." Eiffel deflates like an old soufflé.

"It's two hours away from here, so I'm not even bothering." He should keep scrolling, but ugh.

Minkowski does it for him. "What about this one, Lockheed Martin? That’s right next to you."

"Can we save it for another day, Min—"

"Renée."

"Fine. Can we save it for another day, _Renée_?" he demands. "I’m tired of doing this."

She relents, although only a little. "Tomorrow, then."

"Geez, get off my back about it! I’ll do it when I want to." Jacobi crosses his arms and nurses his coffee. It's in a reusable coffee cup Minkowski got for him, with the lid on because no one can know he drinks his coffee with five pumps of hazelnut creamer. No one.

"If you’re not going to take this seriously, then—" She trails off, which is unusual. She loves dishing out ultimatums. "Just don’t let it fall through the cracks, okay?”

"Yeah, yeah. Now what do you say we put the computer away and drink our coffee?"

Eiffel distracts them both talking about his latest cooking adventures with Hera, this time into homemade marshmallow.

Minkowski mutters something like, "Not in my kitchen."

"Anyway, Hera had to invent a new way of getting burned marshmallow out of the carpet, and it’s a good thing, too." Eiffel grins and slurps his chai latte noisily. "We’re gonna get our deposit back!"

"You gotta let me eat some. That aren’t biohazards," Jacobi adds hastily.

"Yeah! You can help me make them!" Eiffel offers. Demands, really.

"Hah. No, I’d just ruin them. But I’ll gladly watch."

"You're going to help me." The way Eiffel smiles reminds Jacobi of Minkowski. "But it'll be fun! I like eating things that I've made, and I'm sure you will too."

"Right."

"We can play stuff from this musical Ren got me into, it’s about this green witch and her pink friend-slash-girlfriend—"

"_Wicked?_"

"Oh, you know it too?" Eiffel has the happiest look on his face.

Jacobi squashes his immediate response of,_ It’s only like the most famous musical of this era_. "Yeah, I know it."

"I love the songs! Maybe we can—"

"No singing."

"Fine," Eiffel says in the tone that means he will absolutely be singing while making marshmallows. Hideously charming. 

—

"I wired Hera's speakers all through the apartment, which is only kinda legal, but whatever. She also has a bunch of cameras and screens."

"Not to mention," Hera chimes in, "I have this Roomba."

A glossy red robot with a camera and a speaker taped on top rolls into Jacobi's ankles.

"Ow! Nice to see you too."

The apartment seems clean on the surface, but Jacobi can tell that all the things which were previously out have just been shoved into the cabinets (some of which are ominously taped shut). Tiamat barks and bounds inside the house, sniffing at everything, and Jacobi makes a mental note to make sure she doesn't do anything stupid.

At least the kitchen looks usable, not like the mad scientist's lab he'd been imagining.

"I bought you this kosher gelatin we can use! It's made from beef!" Eiffel holds out the box proudly.

Well that was… nice? "Uh, thanks, but I'm not what one would call a textbook good Jewish boy. I've murdered people. Lots of people. Pork gelatin isn't exactly my biggest concern."

"Oh, well, it'll work all the same. Are you ready to cook?"

"Yeah," Jacobi says with as much enthusiasm as he has to give. Which isn't much.

Eiffel turns on music from _Wicked_, one last nail in the coffin, and they cook. His voice is absolutely awful, probably since he has no idea what keys and tune are; although Minkowski supposedly knows, and her singing hasn’t benefitted from the knowledge.

Tiamat howls along with the high notes, but she also spends a fair amount of time staring at Hera's roomba in abject confusion.

Jacobi does not sing, no matter how much Eiffel prods him.

The cooking of the marshmallows doesn't take long, even with Eiffel's gentle incompetence. They make vanilla and raspberry-flavored. Unfortunately, and this is the crucial bit that Eiffel conveniently failed to mention, "It'll take like four hours for the marshmallows to set—"

"—_Are you fucking kidding me?_"

"—So I hope you're ready to listen to more musicals! I have that Lightning Thief queued after Wicked, so get ready!"

They're almost done with Wicked, which is a fucking relief, but then they hit the song that Jacobi knew was coming.

"You can do all I couldn't do, Glinda; so now it's up to you, for both of us—now it's up to you

—" Eiffel warbles along with Idina Menzel.

He jams his finger down on the SKIP button with lightning precision.

"Aw, come on, I like that song!" Eiffel protests.

"I couldn’t listen to you mangle it a second longer," Jacobi lies as he washes the mixer.

Eiffel shrugs. "Ren and Isabel don’t like it either. I think sometimes, to them, it’s about something more than the green witch and her pink girlfriend, and it makes them uncomfortable. Not that they think I notice."

"Mhmm."

"Just saying. If you don’t like it because it makes you think about people you’ve lost—"

"I’m getting real tired of your first-year-psych-student bullshit." Jacobi wants to grab a knife and stab it into the countertop.

"You can’t keep it _all_ bottled up. Just, like, some of it. The way I do!" Eiffel beams, which is not what he should do at the end of a sentence like that.

Jacobi gives him the side-eye. "The fuck do you have to bottle up?"

"Oh… well." Eiffel’s chipper demeanor vanishes. "Nothing that makes sense." He frowns down at his hands.

"Come on, tell me. I’ll tell you what I’ve been thinking about," he bargains. 

That gets Eiffel to perk up. "It’s—" he looks around the floor to make sure it's clear, either checking for Hera or losing his mind for the second time "—Listen, I love all my friends, but… I just… I’m worried that they—you know—don’t like _me_."

Jacobi tries to parse the sentence(s). "Wh—"

"Let me explain—I know they’re my friends. I just think they don’t know _me_. They don’t like _me_. They like Officer Eiffel, and sometimes they think I’m him, and I don’t think they can tell that I’m not Officer Eiffel, I’m _me_." Eiffel stabs a finger at his chest for emphasis. "They treat me like I'm him, or they treat me like I'm a kid. There's, like, no in-between. There's no way that they treat me."

"What?"

"Ugh." Eiffel hangs his head. "It's hard to put into words. Apparently, words were my thing, but it's just so hard to find the right ones. There's all kinds of connotations and double meanings behind words that I don't know anymore, and everyone is always rubbing it in my face!" He looks genuinely angry for the first time since his memories got wiped. His dark hair flops into his face for added drama. "Anyway. That’s what I’m thinking."

"That’s dark, man. I didn’t know the old Eiffel all that well, so I can say for sure that I like you more."

"Thanks." Eiffel sniffles and then asks, "So what were you thinking about?"

Oh, fuck, he remembers. "I wasn't thinking about anything."

"A deal's a deal, Daniel."

Jacobi scowls and aggressively washes a dirty spoon. "It's just a song."

"It's a song about acknowledging that meeting some people changes your life for the better, and even if they leave, they still really mattered to you," Eiffel summarizes helpfully. "You know, 'We will never meet again in this lifetime, so let me say before we part so much of me is made of what I learned from you—'"

"And when those people are gone, you're fucked," Jacobi mutters under his breath. He leaves the rest of the dishes in the sink.

"So… that song makes you think about M—"

"NO!" Jacobi interrupts far too quickly. "No, no, uh… the song makes me think about Tiamat and how much I love her!"

On the floor, Tiamat raises her head from her paws and tilts her head at him.

"Yep, I just love her so much, it overwhelms me emotionally." He ruffles her fur, and her tail starts to flick back and forth.

Eiffel sighs. "I'm not that fucking stupid."

Jacobi sits down on the ground next to Tiamat. "I don't know what I think."

"Not to go full psych-student on you, but… you definitely do."

"I don't _want_ to think about what I think."

"Listen, I never met Maxwell or Kepler. I've heard a lot about them from everyone else, but not from you, and you were the only person who really knew them."

Hearing their names sends centipedes crawling up Jacobi's spine. He has an itch in his hands like he needs to make something explode, and he holds onto Tiamat instead. "I hate that song because we did so much bad shit. Killed a lot of people just because someone said to. I hate that song because despite all of that, I was happy then, really… actually happy. We changed the world for the worse, and we didn’t help each other at all, but _I miss them_. For a long time, they were everything I had. My best friend and my… I don't know if we counted as boyfriends, but we did fuck a lot. Sorry, too much information. I hate that that song makes me think about them, because then I remember that I'm just where I was at the beginning. Alone."

God, Jacobi needs a drink. A lot of drinks. Fuck. Any alcohol in this shitty place? Probably not if this is Eiffel’s house. Thinking about them always makes him crave whiskey, but he can never drink whiskey again, fuck, fuck, fuck.

"Daniel?"

"Ngh."

Tiamat licks the side of his face.

"I think you need to move into one of our houses or something. I don’t want you to think that you’re alone." Eiffel is tearing up again, and Jacobi thinks he might get keelhauled for this. "I love you. You’re one of my best friends." Eiffel flops onto the ground and hugs Jacobi and Tiamat.

"Agh—I mean, thanks, man." He pats Eiffel on the back.

"Will you tell me about them? When you want to?"

"Probably."

"Want to watch TV and forget all about this for a bit while the marshmallows do their thing?"

"Oh, fuck yeah."

They cuddle with Tiamat on the couch; she absolutely loves the attention and melts into a happy, sleepy puddle. They watch some cartoon miniseries about two brothers who get lost in the woods. Jacobi doesn't absorb much of it. One of the episodes towards the end gets real weird, so he's happy to let those memories go. It turns out that the whole thing might have been some kind of dream, or something next to a dream. He can't help but think about it—what if he woke up one day and everything had gone back to the way it had been? Would he be happy to go back to his old life? 

Eiffel drowsily nuzzles Jacobi's shoulder. "You're thinking about it," he says, not even opening his eyes. 

"Eh."

The timer goes off, shocking all three of them completely awake. Tiamat jumps to her feet and starts running in circles through the house, barking her head off, trying to find the source of the noise.

"I sense a disturbance in the Force. The marshmallows must be done," Jacobi jokes as he goes to turn off the timer. 

"Okay, let's slice them up! I'm super hungry!" 

And, apparently, very awake. Jacobi envies Eiffel's nonstop energy.

The marshmallows are a little bit sticky, but they manage to cut them apart without getting any knives stuck. According to Hera, it's happened before. Jacobi doesn't want to think about it.

"Everything looks good! Grab those sticks, Daniel! We're going outside." Eiffel picks up Roomba Hera, idly scratching the roomba’s underside like it’s a puppy.

"What? For ritualized murder?" Jacobi asks reflexively as he grabs the handful of metal skewers that Eiffel points to.

"No, for smores." Eiffel starts giving boxes of graham crackers and bars of chocolate to Jacobi, way too many for them to eat without probably dying afterwards. "Ren and Isabel were telling me about them, and I thought you might enjoy it. If you wanted to. Ren always tells me that I keep doing things without asking people if they want to—"

Jacobi kicks open the door, arms otherwise occupied. "Nope, it's okay, I definitely want to make smores," he says, not sure why he feels like he has to be so reassuring.

"Just so long as you two chuckleheads don't get chocolate on me, it'll be fine."

Right, Hera is here too. Otherwise what would this be? Some kind of friend date… or regular date… with Hera as the chaperone just in case… nope! No! No way would Minkowski or Lovelace let that happen. Stupid.

Outside, there's a perfectly ordinary fire pit, already stacked with kindling and wood.

"Can you start the fire?" Eiffel asks.

"With pleasure." That’s one thing he can do reliably.

In no time, he has a happy crackling blaze over which Eiffel burns a succession of increasingly tragic marshmallows.

"How are you getting yours so tasty looking?" he asks around a mouthful of still-smoking sugar and chocolate.

"The key is patience, young grasshopper." Jacobi’s been working on this one for five solid minutes. "Okay, done. You want it?"

The joy on Eiffel’s face is nearly palpable. This guy couldn’t conceal an emotion if he tried; he’s almost like a kid. "Yeah!! But I’m not a grasshopper."

Ouch. That was weirdly painful to think about. "Here, put it on—no—yes—wow that was stressful." Jacobi helps Eiffel wrangle the marshmallow between some graham crackers and chocolate.

"This is so good," Eiffel practically groans with his mouth full.

"Yep. I’m the marshmallow expert." Jacobi stabs another squishy blob of sugar. "You, uh, got some chocolate on you there."

"Hmm?" Eiffel twists around to look.

"There." Jacobi points to Eiffel’s elbow.

"Mmm!" Eiffel tries to lick it off, wriggling to get a better angle.

"No, Eiffel—you can’t—" Jacobi snickers as Eiffel makes a noise of confusion and tried even harder. "You physically can’t—"

"C’mon, Doug, you’re so close! You almost got it!" Hera says in her cheerful customer service voice. "Just a bit more!"

Jacobi is full on crying with laughter, his abs hurting in a way they haven’t in a long, long time. "_Eiffel_—"

"Jus’ a li’l more…" Eiffel squints in concentration.

"I believe in you!" Hera chirps from the ground.

"E—Eiffel—Doug_, you can’t fucking do it!_" Jacobi has to wipe away tears, one hand pressed to his stomach. "Agh, _stop_, I'm gonna die."

Doug finally has mercy and wipes away the chocolate with a napkin. "Okay, I did it because you were laughing, but… I seriously can’t lick my own elbow?"

"No, you can’t." Jacobi stifles another round of giggles.

"Aw, what the hell, Hera?" Doug squawks. "Come on, you can't do that to me, I literally don't know!"

Hera laughs, ramming her roomba into his foot. "That’s what makes it so funny."

"The two of you, I swear," Doug mutters under his breath.

Something in Jacobi's chest feels warm, and it's definitely the marshmallows. Yep. Absolutely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has been brought to you by... Kolatin! The real kosher gelatin, now in five great flavors!


	4. Barbecue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maybe the real found family was the food we cooked along the way.

Tiamat is using Jacobi like a pillow, front paws and head resting in his lap, practically begging to be petted. When he doesn't move, she gives him the saddest face and puts one paw on his leg. 

"You're such an attention hog." He scratches behind her ears, and one of her legs taps the couch happily. "Okay, get off, I need to grab a drink."

She doesn't move. 

He tries to push her off of him, and wow, that dog is dense. What does she weigh, a hundred pounds? "Tia, down."

She licks his face, which is disgusting on a lot of levels, the most immediately important of which being that her breath smells like week-old salmon. 

"Why," Jacobi moans dramatically. "Tia, _off_."

She puts a paw on his chest like she wants to keep him from moving. 

"Tiamat StrategicIntelligenceFive, get off of me right now. Is this… is this an intervention?" He grabs her face and gives her a wiggle. "Is this an intervention?"

She woofs as if in agreement and jumps back onto the floor. 

Now freed, Jacobi wanders into the kitchen, which is really just a mess of unwashed dishes and cutting boards and knives and things that used to be food. He'll get to them at some point, although it's true that he's been telling himself that for weeks. 

He reaches for the bottle of vodka, and then he sees Doug’s package of carefully wrapped marshmallows. 

Tiamat lays on the floor next to him, one paw on top of his foot the whole time, watching with a crystal-blue eye. He flops down on the floor too, holding the marshmallows, and she puts her head on his chest and promptly falls asleep. Without even trying to eat the marshmallows, which is impressive for her. 

"Aw, pup." He gently pets the top of her head. It's actually kind of comfy down here. 

And then his phone rings. 

"Agh," Jacobi groans, staring at his phone as it rings on the counter above his head. He stretches up to grab it, trying not to move Tiamat, but he's just millimeters away—he manages to poke the edge of the phone and wobbles it closer to the edge. Another poke, and it falls right on his face. "Ow, fuck! Oh, sorry, Tia, I meant _ow, fuck_," he whispers.

Tiamat snores in peaceful oblivion. 

"Hello?" Jacobi hisses into the phone. 

"Hi Daniel—um, is everything okay? Why are you whispering?"

"Everything's fine, it's just that my dog is sleeping on me and I don't want to wake her up. Who is this again?"

"Isabel. Obviously."

"Hey, you sound kind of like Minkowski over the phone; I wanted to make sure."

"I really don't sound... Never mind. Listen, I wanted to see if you were having any success job hunting. Any calls back?" 

"Oh. Nope." He shrugs, and Tiamat snuffles in her sleep. "I mean, _nope_," he whispers. 

"Yeah? Well… I want to let you know that a lot of people have been calling me about you."

Jacobi gulps nervously. "Lovelace, I told you, the fire at that Lockheed-Martin warehouse has nothing to do with me, and the fact that Lockheed-Martin recently bought a ton of old Goddard Futuristics bullshit, including warheads that I designed for them, has doubly nothing to do with me."

She is silent for a long, judgmental moment. "I meant calling me because _I am one of your goddamn references_." 

"Oh. Uh… well, that's good. That's great." 

"Yeah. Doug might have mentioned you were feeling frustrated by the job-finding process. It’s not going that bad, all things considered. I mean, I still haven't gotten a job either, and Ren is right back being a flight instructor. So just give it some time." 

"Huh." 

"_Huh?_" she teases. 

Jacobi makes sure to sigh directly into the phone. "I just thought it was weird that he mentioned it to you. Do all of you gossip about me behind my back?"

She laughs. "No, we have tactical discussions, and don't change the conversation. You're doing your best!"

"Ew," Jacobi says emphatically. "Ew, Lovelace. You're starting to sound like a Hallmark card. It's like you want me to suffer." 

"Suffering is optional." 

"Can I opt out? Unsubscribe? Pay you twenty dollars to stop?" 

"Nah." She snickers. "I’ll send you sappy, optimistic greeting cards until you die cause I’m immortal. I can do this all millennium." He can almost hear the finger guns. 

Something inside Jacobi’s shriveled heart aches, and he's not quite sure for what. "Yeah." 

In her sleep, Tiamat’s ears flick, and she whuffles happily like she’s dreaming about something nice. He scratches her gently behind one ear. 

"So… applied for anything good recently? Aside from the heap of idiots who didn't hire you?" 

Right, fuck. "Oh. Uh. There was this tech startup, Copernicus, looking for an engineer. Also tried getting a job at Soteira Technologies, back to blowing shit up. They both seemed fine." He tries to sound enthusiastic, but seriously, why even bother?

Lovelace sighs at the less than sparkling job descriptions. "Well, good luck with them. I can let you know if anyone from those companies calls me." 

"Nope, no, I would rather not know."

"Mmm. Okay. If you’re sure." She sounds like she’s frowning. 

Jacobi shrugs, realizes she can’t see him, and says, "Yep. You know me. Ignorance is bliss." 

"Duly noted. How’s Tiamat?" 

"Fine. Still sleeping." He pets the top of her head, where she’s silky soft. Her fur is a bit greyer than it used to be, but still pretty dark. 

"Eiffel won’t stop asking when he can see her next. He’s obsessed with dogs and pretty much any animal under the sun, but all things considered… he probably won’t get a dog anytime soon. I think Ren could be convinced to spring for a goldfish or a pet rock, but that's pretty much it. Anyway, if you need someone to babysit her, he’s game." 

Jacobi frowns. "Why would I need someone to take care of my dog? I can do at least that much by myself."

"If you were, you know, going out? Doing things?" 

"_Out?_" he asks in absolute horror.

"On a _date_," she explains with an exasperated sigh. "Or buying groceries, or checking out books from the library, or setting off fireworks on the beach, or whatever it is you do for fun."

"Oh. Well, that won't take too long, I'll be back before she needs to go out or be fed." 

She sighs heavily into the phone. "I mean, I don’t know if you’re over Kepler or not, but—" 

"We weren’t a thing," he interrupts. "I can promise you that we were absolutely not."

"But you kind of—"

"We weren’t a thing!" he insists, louder this time. 

Tiamat snorts in her sleep and jerks awake. She tilts her head at Jacobi, then solemnly licks him from chin to forehead. 

"Agh, gross! Tia!" He wriggles away from her and fumbles with the phone. "Lovelace? Still there? Listen, he was not my… my anything! Other than my superior officer. Our relationship was entirely workplace-appropriate."

She _mm-hmmms_ in a tone he doesn't like. "Methinks the lady doth protest—"

"Fuck you!" 

"Okay, okay, I'll stop. But I know I was right." 

Everything inside Jacobi squirms uncomfortably. "Listen, in the event that I need someone to watch my dog, I will call Doug. Is that all you wanted?"

"Well, pretty much."

He sighs. "Okay. I'll talk to you later." 

"Okay."

"Okay."

"Okay."

"Okay, bye!" He hangs up before she can say 'okay' again. What is this,_ The Fault in Our Stars_? "Tia, can I get off the floor, please?"

The annoying thing is that Lovelace was right. They weren't a couple, and they definitely didn't date, but they'd been… what, soldiers with benefits? Emotionally connecting with people for a reason other than manipulation was not Kepler's wheelhouse. Jacobi had done all the emotional connecting. 

Tiamat snuffles, poking her damp nose into Jacobi’s ear. 

“Agh! You’re gross.” He wriggles free and stands up. “Keep that nose to yourself. I know where it’s been.” 

He opens the package of marshmallows and starts munching on them. Who does Lovelace think she is, dishing out _dating_ advice? He has Tia, and probably Doug, and maybe her. That’s enough for anyone. 

Even though Tia gives him her best puppy-dog eyes, he doesn’t give her any marshmallows, but he does give her a biscuit. And really, that means she won this round. 

“Daniel!” Doug practically shouts into the phone. “Daniel!” 

Jacobi holds the phone a foot away from his ear. “Is something on fire or about to explode?” 

“Um, no?” 

“Then don’t yell at me.” 

“Okay. Do you want to hang out and cook stuff again? Ren said we could use the grill at her place, and I was just really excited because I am a big fan of grilling.” 

"Sure."

"Cool! What do you want to make? We could do stuffed peppers, or swordfish, or shrimp, or corn, or—" 

Jacobi shakes his head and says, "Hot dogs."

"Is that a food?"

"Hell yeah it's a food. I think you'll like them."

"Okay, I can definitely get my hands on some hot dogs." He says the phrase as if they are dogs which are hot, rather than their own item. "I think everyone else will probably come or be there, if that was alright with you?"

He sighs. "Maybe. Okay, fine."

"Great! It's almost Ren's birthday anyway, which according to Isabel is a great reason to set some stuff on fire."

"You know what? I can get behind that." Jacobi catches himself smiling and isn't sure how to react. "I can bring Tiamat, if you want."

That gets a big reaction. "Yes, absolutely!"

"I'm starting to feel like you hang out with me just for my dog."

"She's a bonus. An adorable, fluffy bonus. I bought some biscuits for her, if that's okay with you."

Jacobi looks over at Tiamat, lounging on the floor, and a single ear twitches at the word 'biscuits'. "The hard part will be trying to keep them away from her."

Tiamat sits very patiently in the front seat of Jacobi's car, her tail tapping by her paws. It's almost like she knows where they're going. 

"Want me to roll the window down?"

She looks over at him, tongue lolling happily out of her mouth.

"Okay." He rolls the window down just enough so she can poke the tip of her nose out. When she was a puppy, Maxwell had put the window all the way down, just once. Tiamat had both front paws and most of her body out the window in a second, having seen a bird in the distance and decided to chase it immediately. Tiamat doesn’t have window privileges anymore. 

Jacobi parks behind Minkowski's Subaru (where does she think she is, Massachusetts? Bet she's going to go so many places with that four-wheel drive in a state flatter than a pancake that almost never gets snow, let alone ice. Jacobi is from Wisconsin, and even he thinks this is excessive). He's about to bring this entire stream of thought up to her when Doug yells, "IT'S DANIEL AND TIAMAT!" from somewhere behind the house. 

Tiamat woofs and bounds out of the car, tail lashing back and forth so hard her whole body wiggles. She politely licks the leg of Lovelace's jeans as she leaves the house with a plate of hot dogs, and then barks at the gate that separates her from Doug and Minkowski until someone lets her in.

Jacobi chats a bit with Lovelace while Minkowski and Doug play fetch with Tiamat. Tia has a very limited grasp of the mechanisms of fetch—she'll chase whatever people throw, but then she'll grab it, sit down, and chew on it for a bit before bringing it back. If she even does. Minkowski's tennis ball gets extremely gross.

Eventually, Jacobi leaves Lovelace to the grill and walks over to rescue the ball. "Tia, give me that," he tells her. 

She looks up at him and drops the slimy ball at his feet as if to say, _You want it so much, you can have it_.

"You know what?" Minkowski says wearily, "You can keep it."

With a happy snuffle, Tia goes back to chewing the ball into lots of little green pieces that Jacobi will most certainly have to stop her from eating in the future.

His phone buzzes, letting him know he's gotten some kind of message, and he picks it up reflexively.

Minkowski immediately tsks. "Okay, I know we're boring, but at least try to get your head out of your phone."

"Yeah, well, I got an email." 

"Congratulations," Lovelace says from her station by the grill. 

"It's from Soteira Technologies."

She drops her tongs and immediately tries to grab the phone from him. "What's it say?"

"That's a company you applied, to, right? What do they say?" Doug jumps up and down, getting Tia excited, and she starts barking frantically. Her paws skitter over the grass, tail wagging so hard her entire body is shaking. 

Minkowski tries to shush both of them, but they have the emotional momentum. 

Jacobi closes one eye and taps on the email. At this point, he almost doesn't want to read it. "It says I… got the job?"

"Yay! Congratulations!!!" Doug practically attacks Jacobi with a hug. 

"Good job. Knew you could do it," Minkowski says like she means it. 

"That's my favorite pyromaniac." Lovelace gives Jacobi a swat on the shoulder, because apparently she can't communicate affection without a little violence. 

His face feels weird. His heart feels real weird. 

"Jacobi?" Lovelace asks, poking him cautiously. 

Minkowski stares. "Shit, we broke him."

He blinks. 

"Daniel?" Doug lets go of him and backs away. "You still in there, buddy?" 

"My theory is that he’s just not used to so much positive feedback," Hera explains from the ground. "I think he might have shorted out? But he should be online again soon."

"That’s awful," Doug says, immediately hugging Jacobi again. 

Lovelace pats Doug on the back. "It's okay, buddy." 

"Y'all are stupid," Jacobi says, but softly. 

"Isabel, the hot dogs!" Minkowski yelps, and everyone jumps. 

"Oh, fuck!" Lovelace grabs her tongs and starts pulling the charred hot dogs off the heat. "Uh… anyone want to go inside to get microwave burritos instead?"

They end up sitting on the patio, eating slightly soggy burritos off of paper plates. Minkowski tries to prove how tough she is by covering her burrito in hot sauce and taking a huge bite, which ends with her sitting in a corner sadly eating yogurt from a quart-sized tub while Lovelace eats her burrito. 

They really are stupid, him included. 

Hell yeah they are. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In these challenging times, here are some dog facts! Tiamat looks like a Tamaskan, if you say "Tia, do you want a biscuit?" she will flip out with joy, and she would rather die than have someone brush her teeth. Here are some Grade A pics from the Tamaskan Club of America that are similar to my mental image: [puppy](http://www.tamaskan.com/gallery/web/gallery/cutepuppies/ruby/data/images1/img0239.jpg), [adult](http://www.tamaskan.com/gallery/web/gallery/cutepuppies/george/data/images1/img0022.jpg). Check out the [site](http://www.tamaskan.com/) for all the cute puppy pics! Also, [this sleepy boy](http://tamaskan.com/gallery/web/gallery/cutepuppies/kodiak/data/images1/img0127.jpg), who has gr9 face markings.
> 
> Tia's personality was inspired by one of my dogs, Penny! Penny was a "copper" beagle, golden brown all over except for her paws and tail tip. That's not a real beagle color morph, so idk what that was about. When we got her, she had lived in a crate for most of her life and cried whenever someone left the house. Even to get the mail. She also barked at everything that moved and if you refused to pet her, she would put her paw on your leg, look at you judgmentally, and then walk away to get a better human. She was a good dog, very soft, smelled exactly like old tuna. 
> 
> This brings us to the end of the April 2020 Dog Fact Corner!


End file.
